


i will wade out

by nights



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: "that's not how the force works!!!!1!!!", F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Force Sex (Star Wars), Post-Canon, Sex Pollen, alright enjoy i guess, also yes the sex pollen is from alien poppies, and yes that is a reference to the wizard of oz, if you do psychoactive pollen it's gotta be from poppies, let's get funky with how the force works, so this is.... something, that's just the rule, the first chapter is pretty porn-heavy but this is not pwp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-17
Updated: 2016-12-16
Packaged: 2018-09-09 03:47:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8874544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nights/pseuds/nights
Summary: A starship crash turns out to be quite fortunate.





	

**Author's Note:**

> welcome readers! this will be a pretty porny series as the sex pollen kink in particular inspired me to write this, but it is not without plot. the title is taken from a poem by my favorite author, ee cummings.

The air was thick with smoke and chemical fumes, making each breath from Rey’s lungs feel like a new rip in her chest.She struggled in her bonds, fear rising.The crash meant the starship’s wreckage could ignite at any moment.She looked around her, looking for anything to help her cut her restraints.She thought frantically of the Force, but in her panic all she could do was struggle, like a frightened animal.She looked above her, and in turning her head almost hit her face on the ceiling above.Rey was lucky; the crushed ceiling had come within an inch of her head.Her cell had crumpled in on itself.

Rey could hear human yelling over the roar of the smoking wreckage.One crinkled wall of her cell began to spark and glow with heat, ringing with loud banging noises from the other side.Rey turned her face away, certain that the ship was about to explode and that her end was near.More creaking noises came from the metal, but no explosion, so Rey peeked back at the commotion.A red lightsaber finally sliced through the metal, pieces of wall clattering to the floor of the cell.The places where the metal was cut glowed red-hot and sparked angrily.Smoke billowed through the new opening and Rey began to cough anew.A bundle of black tumbled through, the red lightsaber continuing to slash at anything it could touch. 

The bundle of black unfurled.Through the smoke Rey could still see that it was Kylo Ren.As much as she despised him, she looked to her captor with frantic, pleading eyes — she was still struggling in her restraints, sure that she would die trapped in the crumpled First Order starship, on this planet no one lived on or even cared enough about to name. 

Kylo caught her wordless plea, stood still as a frightened deer for what felt like minutes.The moment hung in the air, smoke gathering in the cell, until Rey broke the moment like a sheet of glass with a fit of coughing.The fumes were getting worse, she could taste the starship’s fuel on the roof of her mouth.

Suddenly frantic again, Kylo billowed through the smoke, so thick his cloak was almost indiscernible from it.The ceiling had bent so low he had to hunch significantly.He fumbled in the dim light with the unlocking mechanism, coughing now too.Rey heard a creak and roar from another part of the ship, and her heart leapt into her throat again.

“Hurry!” she screamed over the rumble of the burning ship.Kylo jerked his head up, fear plain on his face — an expression Rey had never seen from him before — but looked back down and finally released her bonds.Immediately he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her out of the interrogation chair she had been bound to.Rey struggled in surprise, but another metallic scream from the breaking ship startled her into letting him pull her close.Kylo clutched one arm around her while he used the other to slice through the crushed metal walls back the way he came. 

Rey coughed and sputtered as Kylo sliced through the ship, machete-ing their way out of the wreck.A falling piece of metal caught Rey on the back of her calf and she cried out in pain, the rough smoke making her scream tear through her lungs.Kylo’s arm tightened around her convulsively and he yelled as he struck the ship, sparks flying in both of their faces. 

Startlingly, they fell through an opening the lightsaber created.Rey’s knees and palms hit the ground and Kylo stumbled from the loss of her tight at his side.Rey picked herself back up again quickly, running as fast as she could from the crashed starship.

Her smoke-filled lungs tired quickly.Rey stopped, looked back at Kylo and the ship.She remembered sharply that while Kylo was her savior from the crash, he was still her enemy.Rey looked about for a weapon, backing up from the man still coughing and stumbling away from the crumpled metal.Her heel hit something and she tripped backwards, falling hard on something smooth — the back of a stormtrooper’s armor.She looked back and found the fallen soldier’s blaster. 

Rey whipped back around to face Kylo, fumbling with the blaster’s safety.He had straightened now, and seeing Rey’s hand on the blaster, was stalking towards her, lightsaber still drawn.She cursed her uncoordinated hands, still trying to get the safety off, but she was too late.He reached her and, standing over her where she had fallen, knocked the blaster out of her hands with the Force.Kylo sheathed his lightsaber and Rey turned to run, pulling herself over the stormtrooper’s corpse, feet sinking into the soft ground.

Kylo lunged and caught her arm in his hand, yanking her back.  He turned her to face him, hands gripping her upper arms.

“Where are you going to run?” he yelled over the roar of the still-burning crash.  Rey writhed in his grasp, trying to slip free.  It occurred to her that it was strange that he didn’t simply use the Force to hold her.

“There’s no one on this planet!” he yelled again.“There’s nowhere to go!”

Rey stopped for a moment, looked at him.His eyes were wide with adrenaline.She relaxed and in return so did he.Rey yanked herself free, but she didn’t run; she stepped away from him, over the fallen stormtrooper’s body, suddenly uncomfortable with how close their bodies were, now that they weren’t combatants.

Rey truly looked at the starship for the first time.It was a great, dark, hulking thing, small for a ship but not as small as a fighter.Now a crumpled metal corpse, it was spurting smoke into a thick column that ballooned up into the sky, through the slender… Rey wasn’t sure what to call them.They grew tall, like trees.They were pale and ghostly, and glimmered opalescent in the sunlight.Their fronds ruffled in the breeze, but had withered inky black where the smoke had touched them.Several laid around Rey and Kylo, crushed in the fall and skid of the starship.The ground had been torn up.Shredded moss, purple as a bruise, was scattered around the ruts the ship had made in the dirt.In the brush untouched by the wreck, electric poppy-orange flowers — or what seemed like flowers — spouted from low shrubs.

After finally drinking in her alien surroundings, Rey realized that Kylo did have a point.She knew nothing about this planet, no one did.She knew they had crashed on an unnamed planet in the Outer Rim, since she overheard two guards talking about being lightyears from a place anyone knew to look for their captive.There was nowhere to run to but more wilderness.

“Fine, so I don’t run,” she spat, not sure what to say.  Han’s death still stung in her chest, even now in the wake of the ship’s crash.  She couldn’t find it in herself to be civil to Kylo, even though he WAS her fellow survivor.  Flecks of ash drifted into Rey’s eye and she scrubbed at her eyes.

There was an uncomfortably long pause, filled only by the dull roar and crackle of the ship.

“Fine,” Kylo finally said, shoulders drawn up tense.

Another pause followed.Slightly anxious and confused at this uneasy truce between them, Rey tested the waters by reaching out to Kylo with her mind, gently.Their battle during her interrogation had been painful, leaving her with a piercing headache, and she wanted to show Kylo that — for now — she was a tentative ally.She just brushed the edges of what she recognized as Kylo when his mind threw her back, almost violently.Rey winced and retreated, scowling up at him.He stood there, looking down at her with the demeanor of a grumpy teenager.

“Well, I’m not sticking around this hunk of metal just waiting to explode,” Rey snapped, scooping up the blaster Kylo had knocked to the side and setting off into the brush.

“Wait!We don’t know what’s out there!” he called after her.She could hear him following reluctantly, trampling the foliage behind her.

Rey whirled around to face him again.  “Do you want to be around when that ship’s fuel tank finally ignites?” she yelled, and barely finished her sentence before a blast from the ship hit her.  Rey felt wind and heat and then nothing.

* * *

 

Rey woke to a heavy weight rumbling on her chest.Rey realized that she didn’t hear the rumble so much as feel it.Kylo had been thrown onto her and was pinning her down, and the rumble was his groan.Her ears rang, tinny and high.She yelled at him to get off of her, but she couldn’t hear her voice.She only felt it, in her chest.

Rey cried out again, hoping that Kylo would stop rumbling and drag his half-conscious body off of her.  With much struggling she managed to pull herself from under him.  He laid in the purple moss, mostly limp.  He was moving slightly, trying to prop himself up with his arms.

Rey scooted back from him, hands over her ears.The ringing was loud and upsetting.She grit her teeth and yelled in frustration.Kylo rolled over and sat up, hands over his ears as well.He turned to Rey and mouthed something at her.He mouthed it again, leaning forward and grasping her forearms.She yanked her arms away.Rey tried to yell back at him that she told him so, but he didn’t react beyond shaking his head and pointing at his ears.The ringing began to subside some, so she tried again and faintly heard him yell “What?” 

She yelled a third time, “I told you so!”

Kylo pressed his lips together, irritated.“We were just lucky that didn’t happen while we were still inside the ship.”

Rey scoffed and stood, striking out into the strange jungle again.She couldn’t believe she was even speaking to him.When she looked at him all she could think of was Han tumbling lifeless off that walkway on Starkiller Base.

“Rey — !” he called, voice high and sharp.

“Keep my name out of your mouth!” Rey snapped over her shoulder.She caught a glimpse of Kylo, stumbling through the brush, cloak snagging on plants, before she whipped her head forward again.Some dark commander he was.

They bumbled through the forest, Kylo making an unbelievable racket slashing at the brush with his lightsaber and stumbling every time his billowing garments caught on another alien plant.Much like a newborn luggabeast, he lacked grace.

As they delved deeper into the forest, they stopped having to wade through the massive trenches that their crashing ship had carved into the earth.Instead, they had to wade through even thicker brush.Strange bulbs hung like fruit, and the fronds of the tall, pale trees Rey had seen earlier undulated, lush like lace, over their heads.The sun overhead lit the lattice into a glowing canopy.Rey began to slow her determined trek, gazing overhead at the beauty of the new planet.She looked down to find the same bright poppy-orange flowers she had seen before, growing thicker and thicker together as she pressed on.

Kylo sneezed.“Ugh, I can’t believe I have allergies even on an alien planet,” he griped to no one in particular.He sneezed again.Rey noticed they were kicking up dust as they bumbled through the forest.She could see the little motes catch the rays of sunlight that lanced through the forest canopy.She didn’t know that a forest could be dusty, but she figured anything goes on an uncharted planet.

She heard two more sneezes behind her, in quick succession, and then sneezed herself.

“Fuck pollen!” Kylo swore, sniffling loudly.

Rey realized she misjudged the substance; it was pollen, not dust.She had no sympathy for Kylo’s stuffy nose, so she continued through the patch of poppy-like flowers.Rey blinked quickly a couple times — she felt a little light-headed, but chalked it up to not eating yet that day and having narrowly escaped death by incineration.

“Rey, we should head back,” Kylo called from behind her.

“Stop being a baby,” Rey replied icily, slowing as her legs started to feel weak.Her knees wobbled.She heard a grunt of pain and turned to see Kylo doubled over.“What’s your problem?”she asked, exasperated.

“Something’s… wrong.” He managed to grind out, falling to his knees, breathing hard.He looked up at Rey with his pale cheeks flushed red and his pupils wide.Wondering what exactly was wrong, Rey reflexively reached out to Kylo with her mind, but like always was knocked back.

Rey felt a warmth rush over her body that left her hands twitching.She felt restless, like she needed to run until her already-weak legs gave out — away from Kylo, away from the way he was looking at her.She had seen that look before: back in the deserts of Jakku, when she would come across lost travelers dying of thirst, begging her for a drop from her little canteen of water.

The warmth rushed through her again, startling her.Rey’s knees buckled and they hit the ground in front of Kylo, but she kept her eyes trained on the ground.She refused to look up at him, tried to focus on the moss twisting between her fingers.She concentrated on the feeling of the feathery purple plant on her skin, clenching her teeth.She certainly could not listen to the way he was breathing, urgently and with abandon.Certainly not.

Rey’s chest grew tight, and for a moment she was genuinely afraid that the alien pollen would cause the two of them to asphyxiate.When it didn’t, she almost wished it had.If she had choked to death she would not have to live with the burning in her lower abdomen, too intense to bear.

“It hurts,” she said simply, after long moments of silence, the two of them trying to hang on as the pollen’s psychoactive effects took hold.“It _hurts_.”She wasn’t capable of forming a more coherent thought than that.The rest of her mind was a haze, her deep animal brain taking over.She was so aware, aware of the pattern of her breathing, the feel of the clothes on her skin, the sweat on her forehead, the blood as it rushed through her veins, the pain and joy upending each other in her gut.

“I know,” Kylo growled, a gravely sound from deep in his chest that was barely recognizable as words, but _Force_ did it make Rey’s stomach swoop in recognition.She looked up at him, her body betraying her — she swore she would not meet his eyes, it was too much — and felt like the air itself was aflame.His chest heaved, eyes lidded and lips parted.His arms clutched his stomach like he felt that if he let go, he might fly apart at the seams.Rey felt that maybe, if her hands stopped holding to the ground for dear life, she might fly apart at the seams, too.

“Rey,” he managed, and her stomach swooped again.She was as stone, made immobile by the fear that if she moved, she would lose herself in this field of poppies and never emerge again.But Kylo’s words demanded at least an attempt at an answer, so Rey struggled to form a thought, to prove to herself that she could.

“We need to leave,” she breathed, so soft it was like an exhale.Kylo gulped and his hand, where it was tight to his body, grudgingly unclenched, reaching toward Rey.

“Rey,” he said again, voice breaking.

A tiny part of Rey wanted to scream at him to never say her name again, the part of her that still grieved, that had always grieved.For her father and mother, lost to time, but mostly for Han.She knew Kylo was to blame for wounding her again in that same place, that same tender girl marooned motherless and fatherless on a desert planet with nowhere to call home.She knew Kylo did that to her again.

But a different, and at the moment more powerful and exultatory, part of Rey wanted Kylo to never stop saying her name, to never stop sending it to her across the divide between them like a gnarled olive branch.  To never stop calling to her in that way, his voice low and harsh, primal and yet unsure.

Her back tensed, her mouth opened — she didn’t know what to say, what she _could_ say.

“Kylo,” was all she responded, too overwhelmed to do anything other than call back to him.The burning in her gut was intensifying all the time and filling her to her fingernails, she wanted to scream, she wanted to fight, she wanted to die, she caught Kylo’s eyes with hers and felt like she had just tumbled off a cliff.The forest floor had ripped itself out from under her.

His outstretched hand closed the divide between them, his hand broad and usually steady but at this moment, suspended in time, it trembled like a birch leaf.  Rey’s ears rang.

He touched her arm and if before Rey thought she was aflame, she was wrong.Now she knew what it was to be a forest fire.

The breath rushed from Rey’s lungs all at once, leaving her heaving for air.His hand was so deliciously warm, all Rey knew in that moment was that she needed more.She lurched forward, planting Kylo firmly on his back.His arms reached up to wrap around her, to hold her to him as tightly as he had been holding himself before.

They paused a moment, Rey ecstatic with the feeling of just being _held_ , ecstatic with _need_ , although she didn’t know for what.Rey didn’t know what to do, she knew she needed to quench the thirst brewing in her like a tempest but she didn’t know how.She began to panic, her mind wild.Rey was used to being able to calm herself with quiet logic, but in her haze that strategy was of no use.Her emotions ran from her, irrational and torrential.

“Something’s different, something’s wrong, we need to leave, I’m not okay, this is too much, it’s too much,” Rey fretted, fingers knotting in the cloth still wrapped around Kylo’s shoulders.

Kylo’s cheeks, impossibly, had flushed even darker.  He swallowed thickly, his lips parted as he panted.

“Don’t be afraid, Rey,” he murmured, arms shifting around her.“I feel it too.”

This time, close to him, she could feel the vibrations of his words in his chest and it was exhilarating.Kylo placed a hand to her cheek, tentatively, slow like he could barely believe the moment existed.When Rey didn’t recoil, he pulled her down until their foreheads touched and they were breathing hotly into each other’s mouths. 

Kylo didn’t close the distance.Rey knew that was what she needed, more heat, more _him_ , but as the moment dragged on and she waited for him, he wouldn’t bring her any closer.She didn’t want to kiss him.Han falling through the air flashed in her mind’s eye.She knew what this betrayal would mean, even while Kylo’s arms shifted aimlessly around her, gripping her waist and her hips and making her believe, in her heart, that Kylo was everything.But Rey could guess how luscious that betrayal would feel.

Rey pressed her lips to his, trembling, feeling the burn in her gut and between her thighs spread white-hot again.Kylo, where he had been tense and still before, as if he was afraid to break her, was now all movement.His hand grasped her neck, steadying her against him, and he kissed her urgently, feverishly.He nipped her bottom lip, detangling himself from the kiss only to move to her neck.Rey’s body sang — this is the water it craved, this was where she was meant to be.Rey’s body sang and the air around her, the alien meadow swaying around them, they sang too.The pollen-filled air began to feel less like it was on fire, burning it’s way through her lungs, and more like a swig of knockback nectar, except without the sour taste and all of the sweetness of honey.

Rey wrapped herself around him, as close as she could get.His mouth still latched to her neck, she ground her body into him, desperate.Her mind intoxicated, focused only on _more_ , it in turn lurched toward Kylo, searching for the feel of his consciousness.Rey stumbled upon his consciousness in a way she had never experienced it before, all gates thrown wide in abandon.His mind too was drunk on _more_ , so distracted with the feel of her skin against his that Rey felt none of the stiff walls that he usually kept high and tight. 

She felt his mind melt into hers, too, and he groaned against her skin, hips grinding up into hers.Rey wasn’t quite sure where she ended and he began, when she could feel the rough cloth of Kylo’s uniform between her fingers but also how it felt to lick and nibble her skin, to breathe in her scent and feel the weight of her body.

Rey realized suddenly that her hips had been moving, thrusting against Kylo gently.Once she became aware of her hips she became aware through him, too, of the feel of her hips grinding against his hard-on.She began to grind slower, harder, knowing how it felt for him and wanting to tease ever more groans from his chest.

She caught his lips again, more confident than the first time.  They kissed sloppily, but all Rey could really focus on was Kylo’s hands gripping her hips, guiding her against him.  Rey knew what her body demanded and knew she was helpless.  She remembered suddenly what a betrayal her body was and Kylo broke their kiss sharply.

“It’s not a betrayal,” he said gruffly.Rey was taken aback at how hurt he felt in their bond, how hurt _she_ felt through him, and she felt a flash of regret for making him feel that way.She instant the regret coursed through her she felt his hurt dissipate like morning mist.

“It’s not a betrayal,” he repeated, this time more softly against her lips, kissing her deeply.She began to feel him speak through her mind, thoughts coming so suddenly to her and in such a way that she knew they were not her own thoughts, but Kylo’s.

_You, you, you,_ was all she could understand, fragments of her own face seen through Kylo’s eyes — the curve of her nose and the glint of her eyes as they caught the light of the alien sunset — and a sureness that being as close as they were was the most right thing in the galaxy.

Rey was sweating through her garments, already grimy from the crash, so she pulled herself from Kylo’s embrace just enough to tear the clothes from her body.He caught on, helping her unravel her arm wraps and pull the layers off of her, until she was down to her breast wrappings and undergarments. 

Though she felt the cool breeze wash over her hot skin, she could also feel the thick layers of cloth that Kylo still had on.Rey pulled the layers from him frantically, laying her mouth on him wherever she could find skin — first his shoulder, his clavicle, his chest.He pulled her back up when he was still half-undressed.His lips found hers again, but he unraveled the ties on his trousers himself.He grasped Rey’s waist again, hips bucking up into hers and the most unbelievably sweet whimpers coming from his throat.Rey knew that those whimpers were her favorite sound in the world.

Kylo continued to grind into her, and Rey could feel how utterly undone he already was through their bond.The burn between her thighs had grown so strong it was a fiery ache, and she thought of how empty she was and how full she needed to be.Kylo must have felt that through their bond because his consciousness roared in response and his body twisted underneath her.

“Please,” Rey begged, unable to ask for what she wanted.She knew he knew, he was inside of who she was, he was part of her.She could feel his reluctance, his fear that if he consummated the moment that it would leave him just as quickly as it came.She dug her short fingernails into his bare shoulders, slick now with sweat.

“Kylo,” she growled, moving against him more earnestly, hoping to provoke him into action.Still she felt his reluctance.Rey picked her hips up, pulling them away so she could slip a hand down to cup him, and through him she felt how he WANTED, how her touch made him want to die in the best kind of way.

Rey leaned back, unraveling her breast bindings and finally doing away with the last scraps of clothing she had on.Irrationally, she felt a flash of shyness, of fear at how much of her, body and soul, was exposed to this man, her once-enemy.Kylo, mind wrapped around hers, felt her shyness and he sat up, Rey in his lap.

His hands, broad and steady, roved from her shoulder-blades to her hips and back up again.Rey’s shyness dissipated, replaced with Kylo’s intense awe, his desire, his disbelief that she was with him so intimately.He brushed his thumbs over her nipples and Rey discovered a new part of herself that was lit on fire.Her eyelids snapped shut and she felt herself groan.Her hands clutched at his forearms as he rolled one nipple in his fingers and lowered his head to suck on the other.She felt him lose himself in pleasing her, she knew he felt her pleasure as his own. 

Their minds sank deeper into each other, Rey feeling her own nipple on her tongue, Kylo’s skin under her fingernails, the wind as it whisked away the sweat on Kylo’s back.All thoughts of betrayal were long gone — Kylo was right.This was _right_.

She felt herself growing embarrassingly wet, and Kylo sensed it.He kept his mouth on her breast but removed a hand, cupping her gently.She felt through his hand her hair, how soft and damp it was.He ventured further, so slowly Rey thought she might scream.He knew how she needed it, and still he moved so slowly.She felt his amusement at her frustration, and a laugh bubbled unbidden out of her.

His finger finally dipped between her lips, so slick and easy they were both surprised.He rubbed ever so gently, not entering her, and Rey pulled Kylo from where his mouth was still tending to her nipple up to her own lips.They only kissed a moment before becoming too distracted with how much they felt it together, Kylo’s finger catching Rey’s little bud softly.Rey felt Kylo’s elation at how good she was making her feel, and she knew he felt how her body craved even more of his. 

Braver, but almost mute with ecstasy, Rey breathed, “I need you, I need more.”

Kylo grunted “I know” into her neck.He stopped stroking her and, holding her tight to him, flipped them over so he was bent over her.Rey felt the purple moss cushion around her.The poppies she crushed underneath her sent a new flurry of pollen into the air, and each breath they both sucked in felt perfect, a rush of cool twilit air thick with pollen and with the desire between them.

Kylo shoved his trousers down clumsily and Rey felt a streak of shyness on Kylo’s part now, a young and worried part of him that had been drowned out before.Just like he had soothed her, Rey wrapped her hand around his length and sent her pleased, eager heart to him.He relaxed, falling back into his desire again. 

She wrapped her legs around his waist and tugged him closer.Kylo’s hips dipped down and Rey guided him to her.Feeling through each other, Kylo sank into Rey and she called out, loud and high, at the intensity of feeling him fill her up at the same time as she felt herself wrap around him, warm and lush and everything he ever wanted.

Kylo, so slow Rey wanted to scream, began to thrust in her.She felt like she was rattling inside her body.He pulled her in closer to him, so that their bodies touched all down the length of each other.It was hot and sweaty but Rey clutched at Kylo’s back all the same, trying to get closer than physically possible.Kylo murmured disjointed words into Rey’s ear, interspersed with groans and whimpers.Rey coiled her fingers into his hair, tugging lightly at the roots, and through him she knew how delicious that felt.

“Kylo, Kylo, Kylo,” Rey repeated, relishing every new thrust like it was the first one.Never in all her life had she known joy like that, the world swimming around her until all she knew for sure was that she was Kylo and he was her.She saw herself through his eyes, his memory of her in that interrogation room, how easily she chipped away at his carefully crafted walls.She knew his fear of his emotions, how much he hated that they ran deep and furious, how much he craved approval and how much it meant to him that she was his like that.She felt his fear of her, the way you fear an angel, a thing of heaven but a thing of fire and destruction.She felt a small part of him reel in terror at the fact that she knew him now, she knew all of him.

Still, he abandoned himself to his body, urging inside of her, losing himself in the taste of her skin.She felt tears prick at her eyes, at how exquisite he felt in her and how good it felt to let him see all of her too, to know that he saw every insecurity, every pained moment she had ever had and still wanted to be within her, to _be_ her.

With every moment she felt him grow thicker and harder, felt her own body open up to him even more.She could feel his blood thrumming in his veins, rushing through her own.Her fingers dug into his skin and she felt his shoulders move under her hands.She knew she could not last like that and was breathlessly afraid of what came next.His mind soothed her — he knew this sensation, but never quite intensely — and she trusted him to hold her together.

With their minds so intertwined, their bodies crested as if they were one and the same.Rey clung to him, tears running down her cheeks at the sheer pleasure of the moment.Sweat made their bodies slick against each other as Kylo slowed, gently rocking against Rey until they were both limp.

Beginning to clear her head, Rey thought of the pollen still swirling around them, and worried that the same burning ache would reignite in her.It had hurt so bad, and Rey didn’t know if she could take more of Kylo making her feel so _much_.Kylo heard her thoughts and looked at her reluctantly.

He didn’t want to leave.He worried that he would lose her.Had he ever had her?An image flashed in Rey’s mind of her from Kylo’s eyes, aiming that blaster at him after he saved her.She sighed in pain, feeling how much Kylo _wanted_ and how much he didn’t want to feel the way he did.How much he didn’t want Rey to know.

“We have to leave,” she said softly, feeling Kylo’s mind rise in panic.Rey felt his anxiousness trigger the same feeling in her.“We really do.”

Kylo’s body was still curled in tight around Rey’s, but at her words he peeled himself away and sat beside her in the moss.Rey still felt a little lightheaded from the pollen, and sensed that Kylo felt that way as well.The world still seemed surreal around them, a sort of hyper-clarity, as if the world had thrown back its veil.It had begun to grow dark.The thicker parts of the forest were quite dark, but parts of the sky still burned an angry red, and where the trees were thinner the sun pierced blinding yellow through the branches.It lit Kylo’s skin up golden and made the orange poppies seem as if they were glowing, like little burning suns all their own.

Kylo gathered up both his and Rey’s clothes from where they had tossed them in the field.They were now covered in pollen, all dusty orange-red.Kylo coughed and shook them out.He turned to Rey, who was now standing naked and still sweaty among the flowers.Blush rose in his cheeks again and he ducked his head slightly, holding out her sooty clothes.Rey could feel his mind untangling itself from hers in a hurry, leaving her feeling a bit small and almost homesick in its absence.Rey dressed, reaching out with her mind again, but each time she felt a part of him it vanished, like a startled little creature in a tide pool.

By the time Rey had her arm wraps fully wrapped again, Kylo’s mind was the same prickly presence she had gotten used to feeling before.

“We should head that way, I hear water,” Kylo said gruffly, starting off through the poppy field in a different direction, away from the setting sun and into the darker part of the forest.Pollen puffed up around Rey as she followed, and while it did make her dizzy again, it’s more visceral effects had been dulled.

Tense silence fell between Rey and Kylo as they trekked, which left Rey’s mind to wander, and to wonder.The more she thought about what had happened between them, the more confused she became.She remembered how unbelievably good it felt, so good it almost hurt, to be so close to him in mind and body, but she felt disgusted with herself for forgetting who she was with.Kylo had hurt her so badly with Han’s death, and furthermore, she told herself sternly, he was the enemy.The attack dog of the First Order, a murderer, a monster.A man she had seen demonstrate a distinct lack of honor or compassion.Kylo was a man Rey wanted to despise.

And she _had_ despised him — up until she felt his lips on hers, his fingertips on her skin, and especially his mind tangled up in hers.For a moment he had been a part of her, had _been_ her. 

Rey thought she might need to vomit.She felt repulsed, utterly revolted at having allowed Kylo Ren inside of her so intimately; upsettingly, she also felt overjoyed, a childish kind of glee that she had found something so completing.

Kylo had been right, at least about the water.They came upon a waterfall flowing into a large, clear pool.The pool fed a small creek that wound away from them, into the forest. 

Rey sighed in relief when she saw the pool.Finally, a bath.She smelled of several days’ fear sweat and burnt starship lubricant.Kylo turned away pointedly when Rey began to strip.Physically exhausted and emotionally drained after what happened in the poppy field, Rey turned to Kylo half-dressed.

“Are you shitting me?” she said, exasperated.He turned to look at her in surprise, then blushed deeply.Rey scoffed.“After what happened you’re going to act like you’re some gentleman, giving a lady her privacy.Is that right?”

Kylo bristled.“What… happened changes nothing.”

“‘Changes nothing.’Are you stupid?” Rey yelled.She paused.

Kylo grimaced and shifted slightly.“Do you want me to answer that —?”

“Maybe!” she snapped.“Because it sure seems like you are.It wasn’t just —”Rey couldn’t manage to say the words for what they did to each other’s bodies, so she just waved her hands around frustratedly.“It was more than that, and you know it.”

Rey turned away and continued to undress.  She couldn’t concentrate on her argument with Kylo with her own stench reeking in her nostrils.  She had to get clean.

“I’m going to wash myself,” Rey said tersely without looking at him.“You can get the grime off of you too if you want, or you can stand there and stare at a tree like an idiot and think about how much ‘nothing happened’, if that’s what makes you happy.”

Kylo made an indignant noise, but Rey soon drowned it out by splashing into the pleasantly warm water of the pool.She leaned her hair back, smoothing the sweaty strands out of her face.Without any soap, Rey just made do with rubbing her skin and hoped she scrubbed off some dirt.She opened her eyes to gaze up at the sky for a moment, a few stars now peeking out of the cloudless lilac.

She looked back at Kylo over her shoulder again, standing stiff as a board with his cloak bundled under his arm.Rey reached gently out to his mind again, giving in to the part of her that desperately wanted to feel him close once more.She felt the edges of Kylo.She thought for a moment he had let his guard down when she sensed a flighty, nervous note to him, but she promptly ran up against his wall again.

“Asshole,” she grumbled to herself.Rey turned away from him again, stepping further into the pool.It never went very deep, which comforted her — she would have worried that some alien predator would rise up from unknown depths, and a childhood in the desert doesn’t make for a very strong swimmer.The trees around the pool leaned over the water, some so far that their lacy fronds brushed the surface.Around the edges of the pool, little white flowers grew on lily-like leaves.A small amphibious creature squeaked at Rey before vanishing into the dusk.

The stillness of the pool was rudely broken by some very loud splashing.Rey turned to see Kylo stumbling into the water.He lurched forward, falling face-first into the water.Rey laughed loud and with abandon as he came up for air, black locks plastered awkwardly to his head.

Kylo’s face screwed up into embarrassment and indignance.

“Stop laughing.I tripped!”

More laughs bubbled up in Rey’s throat.“Nice hair, O Great Knight of Ren!” she called, drifting closer to the shore again.

He pushed his hair back from his face angrily.“It’s not like yours looks any better.Scavenger,” he added as an afterthought.

Rey drifted closer to Kylo. “Not so intimidating without that mask, are you?You look like a wet ewok!”

“Well — so do you!” he growled, turning away and messing with his hair.The more he messed with it, the crazier it looked.

Rey splashed him, plastering his hair to his face again. 

Kylo whipped back around.  “Hey!”  He splashed her back.  Rey cried out in mirth and paddled clumsily away, but Kylo had more experience swimming and longer limbs to boot, and caught up to her quickly.  He caught her up in his arms.  Rey struggled playfully for a moment, trying to splash her way free.  She grew breathless and gradually stopped struggling.  The waters stilled around them.

Rey looked up at his startled features.It seemed like Kylo didn’t know what to do with her, now that he had her.She reached out to his mind again, felt the prickles.She pressed a little harder, sensed how he could feel his heart throwing itself against his chest, and then it was gone.

He had thrown up his walls again.Kylo let her go, pulling away from her in the water.He turned, pushed his hair back again.Rey sighed.It was infuriating, being able to sense what made her feel so at home after years of feeling she didn’t have one, what felt like a family after years of knowing — deep down — that her own had abandoned her.

“We need to talk about what ha—”

“Nothing happened,” Kylo interrupted.He was still turned from Rey.The world had grown much darker, and now they were only lit by starlight, the two moons that hung in the sky, and a few little glowing plants that rimmed the pool’s shore.

Rey moved closer to touch his shoulder.He jolted at the contact, but though he didn’t pull away he felt tight and stiff.

“Something did,” she said softly.  Kylo was still prickly, a pins and needles feeling in her mind.  He didn’t respond.  “We… felt each other.  I don’t know what happened but I _knew_ you.”  At her words, Kylo pulled away, floating deeper underwater so only his head and the tops of his shoulders were above the surface.

“And you knew me!” Rey said desperately, raising her voice.“I know you did!”Kylo turned to face her, his brow furrowed angrily in the dark, but he still stayed silent.The forest whispered around them.

“I hate you,” Rey cried into the forest.  “Force, I really do.  And you hate me, don’t you?  Or at least, you want to use me for the First Order.  You want to destroy everything and everyone that I love,” Rey accused, trying to provoke him.  Her tactics didn’t work; Kylo turned away again.  She’d have to try a different tack.

“You want to come to the light!” she yelled at his back.

He whipped around, standing up fully.The water splashed around him, suddenly disturbed.“Lies.You don’t know what you felt, you don’t know anything.”He towered over her, glowering down, but Rey just crossed her arms and scowled up at him.

“You might be stupid, Kylo Ren,” she snarked, putting heavy sarcastic emphasis on his name, “but I’m not.I know a Force bond when I feel one.I know how much you want to embrace the light.”

“Liar!” he yelled down, voice breaking slightly.Rey felt his prickly mind flare up, his sharp walls coming down just enough to let his anger lash out hot against her.

“There’s no point in trying to hide it from me,” she snapped.Rey paused for a moment, considered the best way to strike this nerve again.“Ben.”

He yelled in anger and pushed Rey backwards.The surprise sent the air rushing from her lungs; her feet slid easily out from under her, as she was perched on some slippery rocks, and she was plunged into darkness.She twisted in confusion, lungs filling with water as she panicked.She knocked her elbow on some rocks and she cried out in pain to the water.

Rey gasped as Kylo yanked her up again.  She coughed up water, hacking loudly.  He gripped her upper arms tightly.

“What’s wrong with you?” he demanded.Rey finally coughed up all the water she had inhaled and looked up at him sullenly, daring him to make her say it.

The moment stretched on until he finally dropped her arms and realization stretched across his features.

“You can’t swim,” he stated.  His mouth screwed up and his brow furrowed again.  “I’m sorry,” he mumbled awkwardly.  “I didn’t know.”

Rey coughed a little again and didn’t answer him. 

“Don’t call me that,” he hissed, more to the pool’s surface than to Rey.

“What, ‘Ben’?” Rey teased.

“Don’t!”Kylo’s fist hit the water.“You’re just a scavenger, you know nothing of the Force.You don’t know what you saw, or what you felt.”Rey locked gazes with him.His eyes were wide, and caught the moonlight reflecting off the water.“You know nothing about what I want.”

“Which is Snoke’s victory, is that right?Is that what you really want?” 

His mouth opened as if he was going to say something, but he shut it again.

“Kylo, you want _me_.” 

He was speechless again.Rey smoothed her hair back out of her face and reached out to him, probing so slowly and gently she could barely feel him.She felt the coarse, stinging walls of his mind, the fear rolling off of him in waves.His walls stiffened, tightening up even more.Rey moved closer to him physically, reaching out her hand to lay on his wet shoulder.She could feel the fear and desire emanating from him in equal parts now, less the desire she had felt in the poppy field and more the desire Rey knew from her long knights on Jakku hungering for a home she never knew. 

“Let me in, please,” she murmured, her own throat clenching at how close they were.  A small part of her still wanted to turn and bolt, still knew him as the enemy, but that part of her was in its last throes. 

“Let me in.It’s okay.”

“No, I won’t,” he gritted through his teeth.

“You let me in before.”

“I didn’t want to.”

“I know.I let you in, too, Kylo.I didn’t want to, either.But I know you liked it.I know you want to again, I felt it.The relief,” and at those words his body relaxed under he fingers.His breath rushed out of him, a soft huff, but his mind was still shut tight.

“You’re my enemy,” she said to herself.

Kylo let slip from between his lips, “You were never mine,” so soft Rey almost didn’t hear it.Her hand moved up to cup around the back of his neck and his jaw.

“You miss the light.You miss the love,” Rey pleaded.She could tell she was beginning to wear him down, his mind becoming slightly more open.She felt his fear more now.He was utterly terrified, his pulse throbbing in his neck.

“Let it in.Let _me_ in, Ben,” she sighed into the night between them.When he heard his name Kylo tensed up again.An idea flew into Rey’s head and before she could question her decision-making skills, she found herself with her lips planted firmly on Kylo’s again. 

He made a noise of surprise and remained tense for a moment.Rey kissed him more passionately, and he opened up under her efforts.She pulled them down into the water so that only their heads were above the surface and wrapped her legs around his hips.He hummed in happiness, lips moving with hers and tongue skimming across the edge of her teeth.

Rey started to feel herself get lost in the moment, hands roaming across Kylo’s skin under the warm waters, but she pulled herself mentally back to the task at hand.She laced her fingers in his wet strands and he moaned, hands gripping her waist tighter, so Rey reached out to his mind again.The barriers didn’t feel quite so electric anymore, didn’t sting quite so sharply.She could sense his surprise and nervous pleasure. 

She probed deeper, prodding his barriers, and he gradually, reluctantly, finally let them down.She could feel his heart flutter each time she tugged a little on his hair; she could sense how much a part of him wanted to run and hide, how much he especially wanted to hide his scar.She saw how much the last thing he was thinking about was the First Order.

“Ben —” Rey started, but felt him recoil and stopped.“Kylo,” she corrected herself.“You don’t belong to the Dark Side.You never did.I know you want to, but you never will.”

“I’m irredeemable, Rey, I see it in you.  I know what I’ve done,” he croaked, Kylo’s memory of Han’s last expression flashing in Rey’s mind.

“You see my pain,” Rey acknowledged.  “You see my grief.”  Tears stung at her nose and her eyes, and Rey felt her voice waver.  Rey almost tried to hide the tears watering in her eyes, but there was no point in hiding her emotions from someone who could feel them for himself.

“But Kylo, you’re not irredeemable.”He was silent, eyes filling, too.“I feel how much you regret what you did.How much you thought it was right for you, for what you believed in.”She tucked his sodden hair behind his ear, and the touch made Kylo’s body shiver.

“The light is in you, it is you.Come over to the Resistance, you will be forgiven.”Rey knew she was making promises she couldn’t keep.Kylo, entwined with her mind as he was, knew it too.

“None of them will accept me.I have made my choices,” he said, voice hard.Rey pressed her lips to his jawline, kissing her way to his neck and to his shoulder.

“You can always begin again,” she said into his skin.  Rey pulled away to look into his face.  “Your mother misses you.”

His eyes screwed up and his mouth twisted into a snarl as tears finally fell hot and fast down his cheeks.  He ducked his head in attempt to hide it from Rey, but she felt them even though her own had not yet fallen, still wavering in her vision.  She felt them ghost down her face and his pain rose thick in her chest.  She felt his memory of being held as a small boy in his mother’s arms, feeling such unconditional love, before Leia’s arms left.  Rey remembered Leia’s warmth abandoning him for her duties, the nanny that took her place but only saw him as a task to be carried out.  She remembered watching as the newest nanny dragged him away from the other children of the military; a General’s son, who needed to be groomed for a Jedi master, didn’t have time for finding a companion.  She remembered Han, drunk, much taller than Kylo as a boy.  She remembered Kylo’s mother throwing his father out again, to go sleep on the Falcon with Chewwie.

Kylo’s breath grew ragged and Rey felt him start to throw up his walls again.Her thumb stroked his cheek and she murmured, “It’s okay, it’s okay,” to herself and to him.Rey almost wanted to extricate herself, his pain was so visceral.It was too much for her to bear, so she murmured to the both of them over and over.The repetition was soothing.Tears streamed down her cheeks.

He started to mire himself in his memories and his old grief, so Rey pulled her mind away and turned his fallen gaze up to look into hers.

“You’re gonna go home,” she told him softly.“We’re gonna go home.”

“I can’t,” he hissed.

“Yes you can, and you’re going to.Just trust me.”

Kylo pulled his memories back, but this time he left his thick, barbed walls down.

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! feedback is always greatly appreciated, i love to hear about which bits you think could be better and which bits you loved.


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